Dartmouth outfit wins $2.3-million military contract

Krista Brown works in an electronics lab at Pylon Atlantic in Burnside in Dartmouth on Wednesday. The company has won a 2.3-million contract to test and repair military equipment. (TIM KROCHAK / Staff)

A Dartmouth outfit has won a $2.3-million contract to test and repair military equipment across Atlantic Canada over the next two years.

Pylon Atlantic will also have three one-year options on the contract that could push its value up to $5 million to $6 million.

“It certainly is a big win for us,” Wayne Sampson, the general manager, said Wednesday.

“We did a lot of hard work to make sure we were able to win this bid.”

The military work of calibrating and repairing everything from calipers to torque wrenches from all the military bases across Atlantic Canada has been the company’s mainstay since 1990.

“A lot of the instruments come out of the dockyard,” Sampson said. “We also pick up equipment in New Brunswick — Oromocto and Moncton. We send on-site teams to Labrador, and St. John’s, (N.L.)”

Pylon’s big competitors include Land & Sea in Dartmouth, and IMP.

“Certainly it’s a very competitive business and there’s a few people bidding on it that want it,” Sampson said. “We know it very well, so we were very happy to recapture it.”

The company employs 23 people at its Trider Crescent facility in Burnside Park.

“We do other work as well for other customers, but certainly our primary contract is Department of National Defence.”

“There are a lot of companies out there who do work in the aerospace industry that have test equipment that needs to be calibrated,” Sampson said. “That’s where we come in.”

Pylon’s 12,000-square-foot facility includes a 2,000-square-foot electronic calibration lab and a mechanical calibration lab of the same size.

IrvingShipbuilding’s $25-billion warship contract could mean more business for Pylon and a need to expand Pylon’s workforce.

“That’s always a possibility,” Sampson said.

Pylon Atlantic’s Ontario-based parent, Pylon Electronics Inc., has just won the same calibration and repair contract for the rest of Canada’s military facilities. It’s worth $5.98 million over the first two years.

“We take care of this DND contract from the Quebec border east and our Ottawa facility takes care of it from the Quebec border west,” Sampson said. “We’ve had it for a long time across the country.”